THE POLICY IMPLEMENTATION OF MINIMUM SERVICE STANDARD IN INDONESIA:PROBLEMS AND CHALLENGES

Decentralization policy in Indonesia has brought major changes in the relationship between the central and local government in Indonesia. Local governments are very wide which covers the whole government function except six absolute function while the central government has the authority to conduct guidance and supervision to local government. Given that the local government’s authorities are so broad and in order to prevent the local governments from neglecting the absolute basic services for citizens, the central government set minimum service standards (SPM) for mandatory government function. From 2004 to 2014, the ministries /non ministrial office have established 15 MSS to be implemented by local governments. Each MSS is equipped with three (3) guidelines covering the minimum service standard itself, the technical guidelines and budgeting guidelines for financing those services. Once implemented by the local government until 2014, it was known that the achievement of predefined MSS indicators very low where the implementation of 5 SPM sampled in 119 districts / cities known that MSS health met only two indicators of the 22 indicators, MSS education has not met all the 27 indicators, Public Works and Spatial MSS only fulfilled 6 of the 21 indicators, MSS Social fulfilled only 4 of 7 indicators, Settlements and Housing MSS has no single indicator is met from 3 indicators and Order and public order MSS are fulfilled only 1 of 7 indicators. The low success MSS policy performance is due to several obstacles, namely: 1) the contents of the policy on the rules of follow-up was not Formulated in accordance with the philosophy of MSS policy that cause a variety of shapes and characters minimum service types defined by ministries / non ministrial office; 2) Poor understanding by local government officials; 3) technical planning and budgeting is difficult to be implemented; and 4) the local government budget constraints.
To improve Indonesia’s MSS performance in the future, the substance of the policy must be changed including the kinds and quality of service, planning and budgeting systems, budget provision systems and socialization of the policy to
implementers in the region.